Chapter II: Part 2

Two warriors were descending the stairway now and a third was just emerging. The structure grazed the ground, but did not rest solidly upon it. It was necessary to keep the ship in motion, and a grounded stairway could cause unimaginable havoc.

Below there was havoc of a different sort. Two of the men were standing their ground and one had picked up a rifle. But the fourth man was in headlong flight, his shoulders jerking as he ran, his coat flapping open. He stumbled and fell and picked himself up again, stopping for an instant to look back in horror. He did not seem to care that he had stamped himself a craven and cut a woefully pitiful figure, for he added to his shame by crying out hoarsely. He changed his course slightly and headed directly for the grove, moving slowly and awkwardly now, as if fear had begun to paralyze him.

The gaunt, mannish woman was standing very still, shading her eyes with her hands and watching the Martians descend with no pronounced change of expression. But her face was drained of all color. The two stout women were clinging to each other and screaming.

But the girl whom Tragor had seen first by the brook and now saw in a different light, with the sunlight aureoling her hair and a man to defend her, did not appear to be the kind of woman who could be easily demoralized. She stood straight and still by the man with the rifle, her head tilted back in defiance, her lips slightly parted.

All five of the Martians were on the stairway now, and the first to emerge from the ship had been passed by the second, an equally muscular warrior with an even more brutish countenance. With a quick leap he was on the ground, his puckered, heavy-lidded eyes darting toward the four women with lascivious eagerness, the pupils strangely luminous.

The Martian directly above him paused for an instant on the stairway, raised to his shoulder a small, compact weapon that bore a slight resemblance to a sawed-off shotgun despite its technical complexity and took careful aim at the running man, who had almost reached the grove.

The weapon leapt in the Martian's clasp and a sharp crack echoed like a pistol shot across the open countryside, from the hollow, metallic sounding board of the ship's hull to the distant cluster of trees.

The running man screamed, threw out his arms and crumpled at the edge of the grove. The spurt of blood from a severed artery was visible from the ship, a thin, crimson jet that spattered the grass and the foliage and gleamed brightly on the boles of the trees until the crumpled body began to smoke. The smoke spiralling up from the slain man obscured the gleaming, and was blown by the wind between the trees, filling the entire grove with a thin, drifting haze.

One of the stout women swayed, released her hold on her companion's arm and sank to the ground in a dead faint. The other went on screaming, so shrilly and hysterically that for a moment no other sound could be heard--not even the heavy tread of the Martians moving toward the four women and three men with their weapons raised.

The slender girl, who Tragor coveted, gripped the arm of the man beside her in desperate appeal.

"Don't shoot, Kenneth," she whispered, her face pale with fear. "They'll kill you too!"

"They'll kill me anyway," the man said, closing his hand tightly over her trembling fingers and gently freeing his arm. "This is one nightmare that seems to be real. They're certain to kill us all. But I'm going to get one of them first."

The rifle was at his shoulder before she could cry out in protest.

There was another sharp crack, not unlike the report which the Martian's complicated weapon had made. The nearest Martian came to an abrupt halt. For an instant his green-fleshed, masklike face remained totally devoid of expression. Then the lineaments seemed to shrivel and darken. The cruel, slitted mouth lost its firmness and the flesh around the eyelids began to sag. Slowly, horribly the entire face changed color, the green fading to an ashen gray, the pinkish hue of the eyelids darkening to a deep crimson which did not fade.

From a ragged cavern in the Martian's chest there came a brighter flood of crimson. It stained the fabric of his dark-textured, tight-fitting garments, dripped from his garments to the ground and formed a widening pool at his feet.

He swayed a little, but he did not totter and fall. He died standing up, with the animation fading slowly from his eyes. The eyes clouded over, became opaque. But still the Martian remained upright, a standing corpse which maintained its equilibrium by the sturdiness of its firmly planted legs and the sheer massiveness of its barrel-shaped torso and dangling arms.

The mannish woman sank to her knees, covered her eyes with her hands, and began to moan. The man with the rifle stood motionless, his lips white, smoke pouring from the barrel of the half-lowered weapon. The stout woman had ceased to scream. Her face looked gray and frozen and her fingers had gone to her throat. She was plucking at the flesh of her throat, as if the sudden tightening of her vocal cords was causing her unendurable torment.

The slain Martian's costly delay in killing the man with the rifle appeared to enrage his companions. With brutal callousness two of them moved forward, and hurled the lifeless body to the ground. Then, they took care not to repeat his mistake. They killed all three men, with such rapid bursts of weapon fire that they were lifted into the air, hurled backwards and were dead before their bodies struck the ground.

The slender woman whom Tragor coveted cried out in anguish and ran toward the crumpled form of the man with the rifle, her eyes shining with a near madness that went far beyond shock and made her waver as she ran. He was still clasping the rifle, his fingers snagged in the trigger frame. There were no visible wounds on his body, but blood stained his left temple and his eyebrows and hair had been singed. His face was ashen, the eyes blankly staring. She knew at once that he was dead and flung herself upon him, weeping, moaning, her body racked by uncontrollable sobs.

She did not hear the slow, heavy tread of a Martian drawing near and if she had heard she would not have cared. She had no desire to go on living, and had ceased to know the meaning of fear. Her life was over. At that moment she realized, as never before, that no one dies alone.

He had taken her with him and she had died too. Only the hollow shell of a living woman remained. She did not care what happened to that shell. There is no fate worse than death to a woman who has ceased to live.

At first, when she felt herself being seized and lifted up, she struggled only to remain where she was--close to the man whose life she had shared and would go on sharing forever, despite death and change and Time's relentless tyranny in a universe which spared no one.

She was not even aware of the Martian's fleshly strength, the savage cruelty of his embrace, the way he was drawing her to him mercilessly, encircling her shoulders and refusing to relax his grip on her arms until his flat, hard chest bruised her numbed breasts.

At first the Martian was no more than a hindrance, an obstacle, a disembodied force that was keeping her from her dead lover. It was as if a magnetic web had enmeshed her limbs and was lifting her from the slain man's side, forcing her to abandon him.

It wasn't until the Martian had swung about and started back toward the ship, his arms tight about her, that she started to struggle. Even then her struggles were blindly instinctive, her flesh rebelling while her mind remained remote and grief-shattered.

She was not the only captive. Both of the stout women were struggling furiously in the arms of warrior-caste Martians, their faces flushed and despairing, their bodies arched backwards, as if to remain pressed cruelly to the boardlike chests of captors so brutish and alien, their screams silenced by force, was a horror and a degradation which no woman could sanely endure.

The gaunt, large-boned, mannish-looking woman was not being carried to the ship. She was being propelled forward by nudgings from the weapon of a Martian who wore upon his masklike face an unmistakable look of distaste.

There was a cold anger in her eyes and she walked with dignity despite the proddings, her composure completely restored now, her lips set in tight lines.

Tragor, staring through the view-glass, had missed nothing of the deadly, ten-minute struggle. He was pleased and almost beside himself with eagerness to take the captive whose beauty had so maddeningly aroused him from the arms of the warrior-caste brute and carry her to his own sleeping compartment.

The warriors had done well, but he had no intention of congratulating them. Discipline forbade it. A wave of revulsion swept over him again when he thought of how crude the warriors were in their lovemaking. They had no delicacy of perception, no true understanding of how to make love to a woman. They went about it in the most brutal imaginable way. Firmness, yes--that was necessary. You had to be very strong and sure of yourself. The slightest doubt or hesitation could be fatal.

In fact, you could develop what human psychologists called a complex in regard to one particular woman if you failed at the wrong moment, no matter how accomplished you were with other women. He had been on Earth long enough to understand these things, to realize that Martians were no different from human males in that respect. One failure, and a woman could be lost to you forever. And she might be the most desirable woman you'd ever known, and couldn't do without.

It was important to understand all this, because when a Martian made love to a woman who regarded him as a monster, failure might very easily occur the first time. And that failure might be impossible to overcome later on.

No, no, he told himself angrily. It wouldn't happen this time. The captive who had stirred him beyond reason was now being carried up the stairway into the ship. She was still struggling and her red-gold hair had come unbound and fallen over her shoulders and he could see the entrancing curvature of her half-revealed breasts. She was slender and yet her beauty seemed full-blown in a pulse-stirring way, as the beauty of a young girl often seems in the magic mirror which draws no sharp distinction between a girl of twenty and a woman of thirty. If she is lovely enough, she becomes not one woman, but two, her youthful charms blending with the ripeness which will soon be hers and making that ripeness another aspect of her present self.

It couldn't happen this time, he told himself again. He desired her too overwhelmingly and her beauty was too irresistible. She would stir him instantly to an amorous frenzy. He was sure of it. He would experience no misgivings, no apprehension. Already he could feel her lips moving against his. Her lips were full, red and enticingly curved. He would drain the sweetness of her mouth like a thirsty man, a parched desert wayfarer....

He straightened, anger creasing his brow. The warrior-caste brutes were taking unwarranted liberties with two of the captive women when they were under strict orders to do no more than clasp them firmly and carry them into the ship. It did not anger him too much, because the women the brutes had captured would probably soon become their mates. But what if it gave the warrior who was carrying the slender woman ideas?

The brute did not know that she was the woman of Tragor's choice. He had not assumed command and he had issued no orders. What if the warrior assumed that Tragor was hard to please and would not be likely to have made a choice when so many opportunities were open to him? Hadn't he surrendered even more beautiful women to warriors with a shrug, simply because they hadn't seemed quite so desirable as the slender woman who might, unless he acted quickly, find herself in the deadliest kind of danger?

A sudden trembling seized him. His worst fears seemed about to be realized. The warrior-caste Martian had paused a short distance from the top of the stairway, and had taken firm hold of his captive's unbound hair. He was drawing her head backwards, with the unmistakable intention of implanting a kiss on her lips--a kiss that would be savage and prolonged. Just to be kissed in that way by such a brute was a desecration in itself. And Tragor knew that the brute would not be satisfied with a kiss. It would not stop there. His hands....

Tragor left the observation compartment in three long strides, dark anger surging up in him, a fury that he was powerless to control. He knew that the warrior was not too much to blame, for he had issued no orders. But if it went beyond a kiss, he swore that the brute would die.

He had gone beyond a kiss but not too much beyond. Standing at the head of the stairway, with the opened section of hull looming at his back, Tragor took careful note of what the warrior-caste Martian was doing. The brute had placed one of his taloned hands squarely on his captive's back, and was running the other over her body, over the smooth curvature of her hips and back and forth across her knees. Her knees were drawn up and she was kicking her legs in protest, but her efforts to free herself did not seem to be discouraging the Martian.

Tragor did not move at all for a moment. Then he stepped forward into the light which was flooding up from below and spoke to the warrior-caste Martian.

"Come into the ship. Put her down and walk away from her. Do you understand? I expect instant obedience."

The warrior obeyed in complete silence. He cast one doubtful glance at Tragor and then did as he was told. The slender girl slumped to the deck the instant she was released, rolled over on her side and moaned.

The warrior spoke then, for the first time. "I did not harm her. You saw--"

"I saw," Tragor said.

"If I did her no harm, why are you angry?"

"Your orders were to bring her into the ship without making love to her."

"But you gave no orders--"

"They are permanent orders. All captive women are to be brought to me first. I will decide who is to claim them."

The warrior nodded. "I am sorry," he said.

"You had better be. Turn now and walk away from me."

The warrior-caste Martian took a slow step backwards. He began to tremble. "You will not--"

"You heard what I said. Walk away from me."

The Martian turned without a word and walked away from Tragor along the deck.

Tragor removed a small metallic box from his three-pocketed waist jacket, opened it, and withdrew the dart projector from its sterile container. He raised the projector to eye level and took careful aim.

The dart struck the warrior-caste Martian at the base of the neck and went completely through his skull, passing upward through his brain to emerge at the top of his head.

He did not die standing up. The needlelike sliver of metal severed a cerebral nerve that controlled the functioning of his muscles and his entire body went flaccid, so that he slumped to the deck without uttering a sound, but with a conclusive shudder that would have been pitiful to watch if Tragor had been capable of compassion or remorse.

But Tragor felt only dark, terrible, anger, ebbing away a little now that he had found a target for his ire and had laid that target low.

He turned and walked to where the slender woman was lying. He was more shaken than he would have cared to admit even to himself. He had never experienced a rage quite so uncontrollable and he knew that it did him no credit. Jealousy? No, that was insane. How could he be jealous of a brutish, warrior-caste Martian?

The brute had held her tightly in his arms, kissed her savagely, dared to embrace her in a more intimate way. But he had not possessed her. And she had not responded in any way to his brutal lovemaking. She had struggled instead, had shown unmistakably that she would have preferred death to a night in the dark with so primitive a lover.

But that was all over now. He had avenged and protected her and with him it would be different.

It would be very different. He would destroy the beast image very quickly by his tenderness and solicitude, and his virile, forthright lovemaking. There was no brutishness in him but she would find him very firm, accomplished, determined to make her realize that Martians were completely human in every way that mattered--with minds and hearts that worshipped at the shrine of love, and with bodies which were lithe-limbed and well formed. Anatomically there was no actual structural difference between Earthmen and Martians that went beyond skin coloration and the more superficial aspects of posture, muscular co-ordination in the higher cerebral centers, and the distribution of body fat. Martians walked with a slightly stooped posture, but they could stand straight enough when the need arose. In addition to the difference in skin coloration their facial contours were at variance with the human form, and their hands terminated in nails so sharp and long that Earthmen thought of them as claws.

They were clawlike, but only because the nails contained a network of tiny blood vessels and could not be cut without causing a Martian to writhe in pain. Why did it so seldom occur to Earthmen that their own bodies were primitive to an equal degree and that the heritage of the jungle had left its mark on them? Why were they so slow to realize that only the great beauty of their women could overcome such flaws?

Martians were human--as that term was used on Earth. To think of them as merely _humanoid_ did Earthmen and Earthwomen no credit, for it was a reflection on their intelligence. And in one respect at least both races possessed a splendor which no primitiveness could dim. In both Martians and Earthmen the great organ of love was the same.

Tragor remained for an instant deep in thought, his eyes on the slender woman for whom he had killed--and he would kill again, if necessary, to make her completely his own. Then he bent and slipped one arm about her slim waist, and gently raised her to a sitting position on the deck. For an instant she seemed scarcely aware that she was no longer alone with her grief. Her failure to struggle or offer any resistance at all surprised him. She had surrendered limply to his guiding strength, allowing him to lift her up and change the position of her body without crying out or pleading with him not to touch her.

It was a good omen, even though it seemed strange and unnatural under the circumstances. Then, quite suddenly, he realized that she wasn't looking at him at all. She was staring dazedly beyond him, at the blank expanse of metal surrounding the slowly closing hull section. Her eyes were very wide, the pupils slightly dilated, and her lips were parted, as if she lacked the will or desire to bring her thoughts to a focus, and exercise control over the muscles of her face.

She appeared to be in a state of shock. Well that was understandable, he told himself. He should have anticipated such a frustrating development and made allowances for it. He could wait. She would find him an impetuous lover but not an inconsiderate one. He would know how to be gentle with her.

He would wait patiently and--it suddenly seemed to him that he could no longer breathe. Her closeness, the pulsating of the veins in her soft, white throat, the swelling firmness of her breasts, bursting like honey mounds from the constraining tightness of her dress made it impossible for him to wait.

It was all like a terrible dream that is both rapturously intoxicating--sweet beyond anything the waking mind can experience--and laden with the blackest kind of guilt. He had not wanted to be cruelly importunate with this woman whom he desired so ardently--this woman whom he had already begun to worship.

But now he had no choice. Restraint had become impossible.

His arms went out and around her. She was not the first human woman he had ever made love to, but in that instant of fierce passion no other woman existed for him. There were no memories to distract him and provide comparisons, for all past amorous conquests dwindled to a pin point glimmering in his mind, and then vanished completely.

He was only aware of _her_. Aware of her hair, which his taloned hands caressed lightly and the soft flesh of her shoulders which he also caressed, and the tender swell of her bosom which drew his eyes, and her mouth, which he wanted to smother with kisses. He wanted to envelop her completely, and in every pore of her being, to make of his body a palpitating web of love which would bind and imprison her and make her his captive and a slave of love through long months and years of amorous dalliance.

He wanted to hold her tightly and never let her go. There were lovers who remained entwined the whole night through and he wanted to be such a lover now, but a single night would never suffice and he wanted it to be a hundred nights, a thousand.

Earthmen were too quick in their lovemaking, headstrong and foolish. They thought of love as a kind of explosion, which quickly burned itself out and left only ashes. He knew better. He was far wiser and now that wisdom and knowledge was a living flame consuming him. Not a flame that could be extinguished in one soaring burst of ecstacy or a hundred such bursts but a flame that would burn forever.

First her mouth. Claim and possess it, parted lips over parted lips with the dartings of love between. Yes, her moist and yielding lips. She would bend to him and he would kiss her with such ardor....

But it was not as he had expected. As his arms moved to envelop her more completely and his lips approached her mouth she shuddered convulsively and strained backwards, crying out in wild terror.

It was not the cry alone which unnerved him. He could see her eyes now. They were very close and he could look directly into them. They were no longer glazed and uncomprehending. They were trained on his face with a blazing intensity of hatred and loathing.

It was horrible. It shamed him. He himself began to tremble and turn pale. Not only had his ardor failed to arouse her, it had stirred her to the kind of response that he most dreaded--anger, contempt, revulsion. She was no longer even frightened. He could see that she despised him too much to be afraid of him. He revolted her, sickened her. But strongest of all was the hatred--a blazing hatred such as he had never before seen in the eyes of a woman.

It was not even a womanly hate. It was the kind of hate that could crush and destroy. She was clubbing him with it, using it as a gladiator would use a mace--a mace encircled with cruel, blood-drawing spikes.

He had no defense against such contempt, such hatred. It unmanned him, so that he cowered back from her as if she had turned suddenly into a savage beast with bared fangs, slowly pacing about in front of him, and waiting for his knees to give way before closing in for the kill.

The words she flung at him were the worst of all. He had hoped never to hear such words spoken by any woman. But from her lips they seared all that remained of his pride, so that his image of himself as a lover, accomplished and irresistible, shriveled and blackened and fell apart, like a leaf on a burning tree.

Her words were destructive to more than his pride. They even made him doubt the genuineness of his past triumphs, his success with Martian women. Had his fierce lovemaking not been what Martian women wanted? Had he been less than an artist in love? Had they submitted to him only because of his high station, while secretly holding him in contempt? If they had spoken such words as were coming now from the lips of the woman before him would their voices have rung out with the same biting contempt?

He could imagine a Martian woman saying such things to him. He could picture it now. But the words of the slender woman before him were infinitely more cruel and vindictive and even as he listened to them he could feel his virility ebbing away. They were terrible and crushing words and they burned into his brain like a firing rod glowing white-hot.

"If you touch me again I will kill myself! I will find a way! If only you knew how loathsome you are--what a beast thing you are! I would rather be embraced by a toad! I do not know where you came from or what you are. But you are inhuman beasts, cruel and cold and merciless. We will fight you until every man and woman on Earth is dead. If necessary, we will all die. But we will fight you. You can be sure of that. Oh, you can be very sure! You killed my husband! He had every right to defend himself. He saw what you did to the man who fled."

Tragor heard himself speaking in reply. How he managed to find the right words he did not quite know, and perhaps they weren't the right words at all. But he had to say them. He had to speak.

"Listen to me," he said, with a pleading urgency in his voice that he could not repress and did not perhaps really want to repress. "I can speak your language. We have been on Earth for almost two years but we have taken care to keep our presence well concealed. We are from Mars. We call our home planet Jagroon, but to you it is Mars. A few of our spaceships have been sighted in the past, for almost twenty years now. But we sent only a few ships to Earth to explore the planet at first and did not come in force until two years ago.

"Do you understand? I want it all to be very clear to you."

The woman's lips had gone very white. "It is clear enough. It is what I feared. Beasts like you, and men like my husband cannot live on the same planet in peace. You will either destroy us or we will destroy you. My husband took the flying saucer sightings seriously. I did not. I only wish that my blindness had not been shared by so many."

"If that blindness had not been widespread you still could not have struck a single destructive blow against us," Tragor heard himself saying, knowing that he lied but determined to prevent the woman from knowing. "You have atomic weapons, but so have we. And our weapons are more destructive than yours. We could destroy all of your cities overnight. We could destroy them instantly."

"Then why have you not done so? Isn't that what beasts would normally be expected to do?"

"We have a better plan. It is not our purpose to destroy but to build. That is why we are here. To build a better world for both men and Martians."

"With the beasts in the saddle, is that it? Peace on your terms. Peace with slavery for every man and woman on Earth."

"I did not say that."

"No, but you are thinking it. I can see it in your eyes."

"And what if it were true? Should a higher race bow to a race that could not hope to build a ship like this? If you could see the Martian cities you would understand."

"I have never seen a city built by beasts, filled with beasts. I doubt if I would care to visit such a city. The constant stench would be intolerable--the stench of cruelty and death."

"We are not beasts," Tragor said, still looking at her almost pleadingly. "If I were stretched out on a table in the operating room of a New York hospital, the surgeons busy with their scalpels, there would be no horrified faces, I can assure you. There is nothing about my body or brain that is in the least beastlike."

"You forget. I have seen a demonstration of just how beastlike Martians can be."

"Is there nothing I can say to convince you then?"

"Nothing. You killed a man I loved more than my own life. You've killed me too. I died with him. You are looking upon a woman who no longer places any value upon the mockery life that remains. That is why I do not fear you."

It seemed to Tragor that he, too, had died. At least a part of himself had perished. For a moment life had flamed so brightly in him that he had feared it might consume him. But now that vision of beauty, of desire's complete fulfillment, had been snatched away. There could be no rapture in the night with a woman who looked upon him with loathing and contempt.

He could take her by force, easily enough. But how could love have any meaning when it was completely one-sided? Just to make love was not enough. You had to be loved in return, loved for yourself. He had never been able to endure a completely unresponsive woman, a cold shape of ice in his arms. The warrior-caste brutes felt quite differently about it. They preferred either complete passivity in a woman, or protests, tears, and wild strugglings. He had no great liking for either. He preferred a woman who was as passionate as himself and who could return his caresses with unrestrained ardor.

Perhaps it was a limitation in his nature. He had never felt completely happy about it and now it returned to torment him. Why couldn't he be primitively ruthless? Had not an Earth philosopher said that all women were alike in the dark? Perhaps in the dark even a completely unresponsive woman ... no, no, it was unthinkable. He was not a warrior-caste brute and never could be. The small, fleshy protuberances growing from his head were a mark of his high station. The ruling caste alone possessed them, and no man who wore them could ever descend to that kind of barbaric lovemaking.

It seemed suddenly horrible, unendurable to him that he should have to surrender all hope of fulfillment. He had never before been quite so stirred by a woman. Her great beauty had enraptured him beyond reason. Not only her physical charms in the light of day when she was standing close to him, but the promise of delight which those charms hinted at when the daylight was gone and they would be alone together in the night.

No, it could never be now and he had lost her forever. He felt like a man cast adrift in an open boat, far from land, his throat parched, the sun beating down. Water in abundance, but not a drop to quench his thirst.

If only he were a man in a completely human sense, a man like her husband. Then, no matter how much she hated him, he might be able to overcome her resistance by continuous, passionate pleading.

But now there was no hope. No hope at all.

* * * * *

He turned and gestured to a waiting, warrior-caste brute, whose stationary bulk cast a long shadow on the smooth metal wall opposite the drawn up, now completely telescoped stairway. The warrior stepped forward and stood waiting expectantly.

Tragor spoke tonelessly, as if the tumult within him had risen to such unprecedented heights that its ebbing had left him exhausted.

"Take her to my sleeping compartment. I am quite sure that she will go willingly." He looked at the woman as he spoke, and was not too surprised when she nodded. She at least had the good sense to realize that further struggle would be useless.

"If you harm her in any way I will kill you," Tragor said, surprised and shocked by the explosive violence which gave his words so much added weight that the warrior-caste brute paled and stared with alarm in his eyes at the slumped form at the end of the passageway. From the slain warrior's dart-pierced skull a thin ribbon of blood was descending to the deck and spreading out in a widening pool which gleamed in the overhead lamps.

"I warn you," the slender woman said. "If you touch me again I will find a way to kill myself."

She turned then and followed the waiting warrior down the passageway to where it turned sharply to the right.

FOUR

The landscape beneath the Martian mother ship was changing rapidly now, but no Martian eyes watched a lake sweep into view and the dwarfed evergreens surrender their sovereignty to a forest of tall, straight pines, their boles dark against the pale, blue-gray sky. A speedboat came suddenly into view from behind a mile-wide island densely overgrown with scrub oak and hemlocks, and headed northward, throwing up a curtain of silvery spray that slowly blended with the haze that hung over the southern part of the lake.

The observation compartment was deserted and only the tele-communication screen opposite the view-glass glimmered with light and movement.

The light was very bright, the movements of absorbing interest to Martian eyes on every ship that had tuned in on that particular broadcast. Twenty-two Martian ships had tuned in. On the screen a man was fitting a key into a lock in the hallway of a building in New York City.

The man was an artist and every Martian watcher knew that the man's name was David Loring. They knew that he was about to walk into the apartment and change the entire pattern of his life. And that change would be a small but vital part of a larger change--the Martian pattern for world conquest.

It was all a part of the Great Plan. And every Martian knew exactly what that plan would do to the man even if he failed to behave as he was expected to behave. Even if he failed. He was in deadly danger, but he did not know that and it was not important that he should know. Nothing but the Great Plan itself was important.

It was a plan tremendous in scope, unbelievable in its daring.

It was a plan that had to succeed or Martian hopes would go down into everlasting night and darkness. It was a plan for the conquest of Earth by infiltration. But it was not the infiltration of spies and fifth-columnists. Not even the infiltration of skillfully trained saboteurs. It was a quite different kind of infiltration.

To perfect the Great Plan five hundred women had been captured and studied. And five hundred men. Their desires, hopes, dreams, intelligence native and acquired, manner of thinking, loving, dressing, walking, eating, sleeping; their habits and methods of choice in every aspect of living, taste in women--or, in the case of the women, men. Sex proclivities, sex drives, physical appeal, were all approached scientifically, and the effects of enhancement of the sex urge and what happens when it is enormously diminished by accident or design.

The Earth people were kept in captivity for eight months and then released, with all knowledge of what had happened to them blotted from their minds.

Five hundred men. Five hundred women. Living models. Living models for--what?

Only the Martians knew.

The Great Plan was protected, guarded, veiled in secrecy. But now one man was about to know, to be tested, to enter into the inner workings of the Plan. His name was David Loring and he was an artist and he was a man of very great talent, perhaps even a man of creative genius.

One man alone first and then ten thousand men, the wielders of political and social power, statesmen, generals, industrialists of the first rank, influential moulders of public opinion, atomic physicists, the key men in a hundred laboratories. Ten thousand men who could strategically determine, by the power invested in them whether human civilization should resist or surrender when the Martian mask was lowered and Martian intentions were made unmistakably plain.

Ten thousand men who must be made to say: "We must surrender. We shall. The Martians will not destroy us. They wish only to live with us in peace, in a world so strangely beautiful that we cannot understand why we were content to live in the world as it was,--with its poverty and wars and widespread human misery. We have received from the Martians a living gift that has transformed our lives and made us men indeed. Let us surrender freely and joyfully, with everlasting gratefulness to the gift-bearers."

Ten thousand women too, in high places, in the front ranks of industry and politics, women of enormous wealth, of great and commanding talents who had found no man to please them, or had foolishly allowed themselves to believe that they did not need men to enrich their lives and continuously adore them. Ten thousand women who must also be made to say: "Let us surrender with gratitude, for in the world as it was there was no true happiness for career women. Now all that is changed and we are deliriously happy."

In the thrumming observation compartment of the mother ship, as it moved southward toward New York City, the landscape beneath a riot of autumn colors, the sky clearing now and the haze dissolving, the tele-communication screen continued to glow brightly.

And on the screen the man named David Loring was moving into a room fragrant with woman-scent, with the lingering perfume of his beloved and another perfume that mingled strangely with it, barely noticed but impinging on his senses in a subtle, and beguiling way--the odor of jasmine.

A low, droning sound arose suddenly in the observation compartment and a wall panel swung open.

Two Martians stood framed in the lighted aperture, remaining for a moment motionless, neither advancing nor retreating, but staring steadily at the tele-communication screen, as if it were commanding all of their attention and had for them an almost hypnotic fascination.

One of the Martians was Tragor. The other was a shorter, less heavily muscled ruling-caste individual, stern of eye and lean to the point of emaciation. His name was Sull.

Tragor seemed to have aged and almost to have shrunken in stature. There was a smouldering bitterness in his eyes, a look of savage frustration.

If only her rejection of him could have wavered slightly, he might have been able to endure her scorn. He had tried in a thousand ways to please her, had humbled himself, had knelt in desperate appeal at her feet.

He had beaten on the panel of his sleeping compartment when she had locked it--and he had given her permission to lock it--until the bruising of his flesh had become too painful to endure and blood had dripped from his taloned hands. The back of his right hand was scraped raw.

Never had a woman been wooed so ardently, with such utter abandonment, with such a thrusting aside of all pride. Even a woman of ice should have been stirred to compassion, should have relented a little. Was there not something in all women which responded to the lovemaking of the stricken, the hopeless, the lost? Should not her maternal instincts have been aroused?

They had advanced into the observation compartment now and he was suddenly aware that Sull was talking to him.

"You must be quite mad to forget in so dangerous a way why we are on Earth, Tragor. The Plan is about to be tested, an actual experiment is at the crucial stage, and you let a woman make a complete fool of you."

"I am sorry," Tragor heard himself replying. "I did not intend--"

"You did not intend. You are sorry. What a pitifully weak excuse that is! We should not have gone searching for women at all at so crucial an hour. The success of this experiment is vital to us. We may be needed to silence the man if the experiment is not a success. If you were not my superior I might be tempted--"

"Do not allow yourself to be tempted, Sull," Tragor heard himself saying, his bitterness and frustration giving way to rage. "I warn you. I am in no mood to countenance insubordination. I would be quite capable of silencing you, in a way that would cause you exquisite torment."

"I am not afraid of you, Tragor. My lineage is almost as high as your own. I have a right to speak my mind."

"Speak it then, and let us be done with it. I know where my duty lies. I have not neglected it in any way."

"You are trembling so I am concerned for your sanity. You are thinking of that woman and you are thinking of her compulsively and that is bad. I would never allow a woman to hold the whip hand. They must be made to obey."

"You have never been in love, Sull. You cannot force a woman to love you."

"You can force her to respond."

"Sull, there is something about you that I do not like. I refuse to listen to you. We have come to watch the experiment. Let us watch."

The two Martians approached the tele-communications screen and stood before it. The man named David Loring was in the room of his beloved staring about him now, his eyes on the unmade bed and a slipper that she had dropped in her haste to leave the apartment. He was standing very still, his image very sharp on the lighted screen.

Tragor turned and glanced for an instant at the view-glass, which mirrored the shining waters of the lake far below and the launch which was heading northward.

He stiffened in instant alarm, gripping Sull's arm. "That speedboat!" he whispered. "Sull, look! Quickly! Can you see it? They've observed the ship and are turning about. We can't allow that many eyewitnesses to remain alive when everything is so crucial. It would be dangerous--the height of folly. We must silence them immediately."

Sull turned and stared in the view-glass, his lean body and the emaciated lines of his face making him look almost mummylike in the cold overhead light.

"Three men and three women," he said. "One of the men has a camera."

"It would not be the first time that photographs have been taken of our ships in daylight," Tragor said quickly. "But we cannot risk it now. Events are moving too rapidly."

"Yes, it would be a very clear photograph, with identifiable scenery in the background. The kind of photograph it would be difficult to fake. It would carry conviction, if backed up with the observations of six eyewitnesses. I do not like it at all."

"Neither do I. And it is too late to get out of range. They have started taking pictures and they can see us clearly. I'm afraid we shall have to destroy the boat."

Tragor turned, strode quickly across the compartment and picked up a communication tube. He spoke into it, issuing detailed instructions, pleased by the steady way his voice rose above the faint buzzing and clicking of the instrument, feeling within him the sureness and firmness which he always experienced when he knew himself to be in command....

On the bright waters of the lake the occupants of the launch were no longer in a merrymaking mood. It had been quite wonderful to be in such a mood and it had lasted for five hours before the huge, shining disk had come into view. Both the men and the women had been drinking heavily and had felt gloriously relaxed and at ease, the way they had known they would feel on a speedboat excursion with no holds barred. Even now on the foredeck there was still a sprawl of arms and nylon-encased legs and a sleepy voice whispering: "I'm not going to get up, lover. Not even going to get up and look. You hear me, lover? It's too dee-licious right here. What do I care about an old flying saucer? You are sending me, lover. Sweetkins, come closer. Closer ... that's it. Never mind that silly old flying saucer. We can do our own flying right here."

All of the others had gotten up, however and were staring up at the sky. One of the women was very tall, but otherwise no fault could have been found with her from a man's point of view. She was wearing only a halter and a transparent, black gauze brassiere which was having no success at all in concealing her rose-tipped, sharply pointed breasts. Her legs were long and so beautifully shaped that they could very easily have persuaded a man at the wheel of a speedboat to ignore the safety of his companions in a dangerous gale. The whiteness of her body where it wasn't sun-tanned was a specialty of the house, and her face went with the menu like the rarest of Parisian wines.

The man who stood at her side had tossed the menu aside for a moment, apparently. He was almost as tall as she was, with curly blond hair and a rugged, outdoorsman aspect. He was wearing a gray tweed sports jacket and a stubby pipe was clamped between his teeth, the smoke drifting out over the water.

The woman sprawled on the foredeck, who still did not seem in the least interested in the saucer, was a redhead, and she also wore a halter. But her companion, who had a Latin profile and hair so black that it could have been mistaken for the wings of a crow, was doing his best to conceal most of her charms. The third woman was a short, almost dumpy brunette, but there was something attractive about her.

The man with the camera was heavy-set and ruddy-faced and attired in a bathing suit. He seemed the most excited member of the party.

"And I thought people who took UFO's seriously were whacks!" he shouted. "Good Lord! Look at it. Just look at it. It's an Unidentified Flying Object, all right, but when I get it on film the lads in Washington will drop the 'Unidentified'. It's from somewhere in space. Mars, Venus! Who knows? Big--oh, my God!"

"You've got a good camera there," the man in the tweed sports jacket said, removing the pipe from his mouth and speaking very calmly. "A Leica, isn't it?"

"Sure it's a good camera. The best. But why in hell does that interest you now? A kid's box camera would do the job just as well. You're a funny guy, Jim. Does nothing excite you?"

For reply the tweedy man glanced significantly at his tall companion, his eyes lingering for an instant on the black gauze brassiere, and then passing downward to her shapely legs.

"Blondes, brunettes and redheads," he said, rather tritely.

"Oh, come off it. No guy could see a flying saucer--actually see one at close range--and not bust his seams with awe. Yeah, that's what I said. _Awe._ A fancy word, but I'm not ashamed to use it. Boy! Brother! It's so big it fills half the sky."

"I see what you mean," the tweedy man said. "But I never allow myself to get too excited. It doesn't pay."

"Do you have to take photographs?" the tall girl said. "It makes me terribly nervous. Suppose they don't want to be photographed?"

"I thought of that. But it's the chance of a lifetime. I'm not passing it up."

"Oh, lover!" came from the foredeck. "Oh, darling, sweet, I never imagined--don't stop now."

"Oh, Gawd!" the tall girl said. "Do we have to put up with that?"

"It's a crazy world," the tweedy man said. "That's why I'm such a skeptic. A flying saucer? Maybe. But I'm not convinced by any means. It could be a Naval Observatory plane, some new fancy kind that's disk-shaped and very large. Or maybe the Russians have come up with a low-flying satellite. Anything is possible. I'll admit that if I was convinced I would get excited."

"I'm frightened," the short brunette said. "I'm so scared I can't think straight."

"I guess we all are," the tweedy man admitted. "I take back what I said. I guess we all are. But if we just sit tight it will be gone in two or three minutes."

"I've got thirty-two exposures on this roll," the man with the camera said. "I'll get it from every angle. There won't be any argument about it this time. They'll be banner headlines and every paper in the country will give the pictures a front-page spread. I'll be in _Life_. Both the pictures and the guy who took them. The best kind of publicity for a writer. He made it on the flying-saucer circuit."

"I agree with Ellen," the tweedy man said. "I don't think you should be taking pictures. And it's not really a joking matter."

"I'm not joking. Believe me, I'm not. I'm just being a little light-headed. Can you blame me for that? You get keyed up and you think of the craziest things. Like in the poem. Two lines. 'His life was scarlet but his books were read.' To a writer that's important. Just to be read. Starting tomorrow, I'll have fifty million readers."

"You're over stimulated," the tall girl said. "Calm down. The right place for over stimulation is where it can be appreciated. There's a time and place for everything, Freddy boy, as you should know. If that flying saucer was a woman, I bet you wouldn't be half as excited."

"That's where you're wrong. But if flying saucers really exist, do you realize what that means? The whole universe could cave in on us. Anything is possible, as Jim said. Only he was thinking of Russian satellites. I'm thinking visitors from space who may bear us no love, who may want to see the whole planet go _pouf_."

On the gleaming waters of the lake four frightened people and two who were too preoccupied to be frightened, lived out the last five minutes of their lives with the unique individuality which sets every man born into the world apart from all other men, every woman apart from all other women.

They were no different from a million other people as people go: thoughtful, whimsical, light-hearted, unselfish and self-seeking, generous and tight-fisted, courageous and cowardly, aggressive and self-effacing as changing circumstances dictated. Each was a world in himself or herself--each a universe, a spiral nebula.

And in a blazing split second of time six universes were blotted out.

It happened so quickly there was no pain, no shock even. From the hull of the Martian mother ship a shaft of blinding incandescence lanced down, white, flaring, terrible. A dull concussion shook the bed of the lake, ran in earthquake-like waves to both shorelines, toppled a few trees, and traveled on with an electrically generated surcharge to the brushwood-covered summits of adjacent hills and set the brush aflame.

Where the shaft struck the water geysered. Elsewhere it was churned into whitecaps and miniature whirlpools. A dozen gigantic catfish were killed instantly and rose slowly to the surface to float, white-bellied, near the shore.

When the incandescence vanished, both the boat and its occupants were gone.

"Let us hope we encounter no more men with cameras before we have made certain that the Plan will succeed." Tragor said.

He had returned to the tele-communication screen and was standing at Sull's side, watching the image of the man who, more than any other member of his race, had become the trigger mechanism that would make or break the Plan....

David Loring had not turned, but now the door was slowly opening behind him and someone was coming into the room. On the bright and flickering screen Loring's image seemed a little larger than life size, the planes of his face a little sharper than when he had first stepped into the room. Even his shadow on the floor seemed to lengthen as Tragor stared, and Tragor found himself wondering--the thought, of course, was absurd--if that shadow might not continue to lengthen, slowly and relentlessly, until it filled the world and brought the Martian Plan crashing down in ruin.